Boys and Girls Club grant request for new early childcare center

Jody Hernandez, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of the Northern Plains, is excited.
After months of meetings with every possible level of stakeholder in regard to childcare needs across the Flandreau area community, she, along with a determined group of partners, turned in the final proposal this past week for a collaborative early childcare project she believes will serve as a model for countless other communities.
Hernandez has been working on the plan with representatives from the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe and the City of Flandreau.
What the partnership submitted to the Governor’s Office for Economic Development are plans for a new, independent Early Learning Center.
The Center would sit adjacent to the Flandreau Public School campus, just outside of the Community Center and Armory and across the parking lot from the current Boys and Girls Club (old tennis court).
The primary goal of the new center would be to provide, in one space, quality, affordable, and accessible care for children ages 0-5 from early morning through late in the evening — a need identified across the community as hours at many local jobs can be untraditional compared to the typical 8 am - 5 pm.
Families with parents who might work outside of the community also say they can’t get back fast enough to pick their children up before other daycares close.

A lack of providers and restricted hours, families say, often leave at least one parent with little choice but to remain out of the workforce so that there is someone to take care of their children, at least in the early years.
The Boys and Girls Club proposal states that even with three licensed and five unlicensed in-home childcare providers in Flandreau, upwards of 230 infants and young children currently remain without care locally.
The new Center, should a $500,000 Governor’s Office of Economic Development Community Block Grant be awarded the Club and its community partners, would aim to be a resource for families in need of childcare as well as for other local in-home child care providers through classes and other supporting materials and opportunities.
Hernandez added that the grant proposal also calls for the Center to be a career pathway for local juniors and seniors interested in a childcare profession, or who may want to work to earn credits toward a career in teaching. They would have the opportunity to be part of the workforce needed to staff the facility.
The opportunity would be open not only for Flandreau Public students, but juniors and seniors at Flandreau Indian School as well.
Dozens of others, in addition to the City and FSST, have also signed onto the project including Flandreau Public Schools, the Flandreau Development Corporation, several local businesses, South Dakota State University, and Avera Health.
Should the grant be fully funded, it will still take a partnership of private and public resources to create a sustainable long-term childcare program.
Flandreau is one of 28 communities statewide eligible for funding for expanded child care opportunities, each community had until this past week to submit plans for their own innovative strategy to deal with their communities unique problems and craft detailed plans for solutions.
The proposed early childhood care center locally, should it come to fruition, would also make way for another much-desired community resource in the new addition about to be built at the current Boys and Girls Club location in Flandreau.
More on that in the coming weeks.
A separate grant to help fund that long-awaited expansion was formally awarded to the Club this past week. Bids for the $2.8 million project are now open.